Saturday, February 16, 2013

Mating With A Neanderthal

There was quite a furor the other day when a respected Harvard professor of genetics named George Church suggested the possibility that an "extremely adventurous female human might someday serve as surrogate mother for a cloned Neanderthal baby". He contends that the cloning of a live Neanderthal baby would soon be possible and might be good, because using stem cells to create a Neanderthal gnome would benefit those of us who are not Neanderthal's, improving the human gene pool. (My quick unscientific Neanderthal test....If you have more than one cell phone or use your phone more than 10 times per day you're likely a Neanderthal and eligible to breed with another one).
Scientists say the thing that can most quickly ruin humanity is a lack of diversity in the gene pool, so based on that adding a strong Neanderthal link would help us.

Hmmmm This Church guy also says either a chimp or a human female could be the mom of the Neander baby. I think any reality TV show would offer many great near Neanderthal contestants as a great breeding pool. And if no willing mom to be can be found there the audience who watches reality TV will give us even more capable Neanderthal brained types to be give birth. One problem for the new mom though would be that when a cruel stranger says her baby "looks like a monkey" the baby really might look like an ape. Oh, well, if Snookie can hide her ape-like flaws with make-up so can a little Neandi.

Some might suggest this is really a silly idea, and you might even think that I am making fun of it here. Others may question the ethical nature of this. But does society really have any ethics left, anyway? Why not go Neanderthal? It can't hurt. I also wonder how the Neanderthal babies would react when watching the near Neanderthal technological humans they see as those modern apes react hypnotically with their cells phones, i pods, blackberries and the rest. Why, if I were to go to an Apple store how would I be able to tell the human techno apes from the Neandi's? Too, do we need Neanderthal's when we already also have politicians? Adding Neandi's might be too much for the gene pool.

Worse! I see that the Kardashian family might even try to make a new reality show out of this, maybe call it 'Kim Takes Neandi Shopping' or something. I am not sure humanity could survive that..

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